Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c31.45

c31.45

**Physical Exercise.** Along with the needs of mental and moral training, the monasteries, strange as it might appear, were not unmindful of the needs of physical health for which regular exercises were prescribed. I-tsing tells us that "in India both priests and laymen are generally in the habit of taking walks, going backwards and forwards along a path, at suitable hours, and at their pleasures. . . The walking hours are in the forenoon and late in the afternoon. They either go away (for a walk) from their monasteries, or stroll quietly along the corridors". This physical exercise was expressly undergone "for the sake of taking air" so as "to keep oneself in good health or to cure diseases". The Buddha himself took this exercise: "there are cloisters where he used to walk, on the Vulture-Peak, under the Bo-tree, in the Deer Park, at Rājāgriha, and in other holy places" which were two cubits in width and fifteen in length (p. 114). The Vinaya often speaks of monks preferring to walk up and down as an aid to meditation itself!